Gothamist: Thinking About Governors Island

Joep de Koning

Tue, 17 Oct 2006 09:06:38 -0500

I am afraid that somehow a typo slipped in the above Letter to the NY Times Editor. The Tolerance Monument as centerpiece of the Tolerance Park Historic New Amsterdam is no higher than 151 feet or 46 meters, the height of a 14 story building. Mr. Johnston and Mr. Littlefield appear rather alarmist, misinformed or wrong by suggesting that money is or may be the issue. The nonprofit Tolerance Park is entirely self-sustaining and the initial funding sources for it had been raised already in 1999 and 2000. Today, the park would have been substantially completed if the fractious political interests hadn't held it up for eight years. By going to www.NationalHeritageTriangle.com anyone can get a pretty good overview of our project especially when using the various links.

Jen

Mon, 06 Feb 2006 16:14:23 -0500

Actually, from the way things are going so far, it sounds like Doctoroff learned nothing from the 2012 Olympics. He still seems determined to sell Governors Island to the highest bidder behind closed doors. Join the Governors Island Alliance, kids, and help make sure the public will still have access to the island. And go there in the spring to see it for yourself before it's too late...

timbnyc

Mon, 06 Feb 2006 09:26:15 -0500

Doctoroff is so desperate to develop something, anything....

Larry Littlefield

Mon, 06 Feb 2006 08:01:02 -0500

I fear of a triumph of what liberalism has degenerated into -- a cash eating playground that only the affluent can afford to access, which is kept pristine (like Central Park) as library hours continue to be cut, and parks in poor neighborhoods continue to deteriorate. The only real issue here for 7.5 million of 8.0 million New Yorkers is will it make money or drain money? Including paying back the money that is being put into it up front. They should have given it to the U.N., move the U.N. and all the embassies there, and put their Manhattan properties back on the tax rolls.

Joep de Koning

Sun, 05 Feb 2006 21:11:55 -0500

Letter to the NY Times Editor: Mark Caldwell, in the NY Times of February 5, 2006; “Sleeping Beauty, Governors Island, a trove of history”, did your readers a great disfavor by not revealing the island’s momentous national legacy. Namely, America’s primary virtue of tolerance, a dynamic value, was planted as a legal-cultural tradition on Governors Island by the first shiploads of settlers in 1624. That legacy was the rationale for our proposal which called for a 50-acre historic park-to-tolerance to be complemented by a tolerance monument of third-millennium grandeur. It was first conveyed to the authorities in 1998 and subsequently backed, in the year 2000, by a pledge of one hundred million dollars as well as the historical and cultural support of the peoples of The Netherlands and Belgium. The park and monument are now integrated. The first is to be named Historic New Amsterdam and the latter is to be a 300 feet high version of Barnett Newman’s sculpture Broken-Obelisk. That sculpture had been dedicated to Martin Luther King and stands in the great hall of the Museum of Modern Art in New York. The tolerance monument is envisaged to be of equal height to the Statue of Liberty because religious, ethnic and racial tolerance is the foundation of successful pluralism. Tolerance and liberty are therefore equal partners of American freedom. Our park would compose the National Heritage Triangle of three primary American values; each one embodied by an island with its own unique contribution to history. The island triad of Governors-, Liberty-, and Ellis Island would thus symbolize tolerance, liberty and welcome. Not acting upon recognized intolerance affirms that laxity, passivity and apathy are its friends. Tolerance—an active notion—demands. Always a two-way-street, not one-way accommodation, it defines and gives meaning to an otherwise undemanding, generic liberty. Only broad awareness and conscious vigilance of religious, ethnic and racial tolerance as inseparable from liberty will help safeguard and sustain “American” freedom because in an intolerant [disrespecting, discriminatory] society liberty-for-all is not possible. Cartoons in a Danish newspaper and the recent international reaction thereto prove that understanding of this fundamental human right is far from universal. In the end, the French role in the delivery of the iconic Statue of Liberty was accepted. Having delivered our plan to the authorities in about three hundred thousand pages of letters and proposals over an eight year period, all we can report is that the silence has been deafening! Mr. Caldwell would or should certainly know that. Joep de Koning President@TolerancePark.org www.NationalHeritageTriangle.com 139 East 79th Street, 15th floor New York, NY 10021 Tel: (212) 737-3216 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Governors_Island

Tim

Sun, 05 Feb 2006 15:38:45 -0500

Anyone else been to the Rooftop Films screenings on Governor's island the last couple of years?They are a ton of fun, and one of the few times you can go and hang out on the island.

march hare

Sun, 05 Feb 2006 15:13:51 -0500

NB: two out of three Doctoroffs are spelled wrong.